Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

Funding Source

PSU EAGLES: Funded by the National Science Foundation

Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

Concrete pavements often crack from the bottom up under heavy wheel loads caused by trucks or airplanes, temperature, and other deterioration mechanisms. These cracks are invisible at the surface until significant damage has already occurred. By using Ultrasonic Monitoring (UM), we can detect this hidden damage long before it's visible to the naked eye, providing an early warning system. By sending and receiving ultrasonic pulses, we can detect subtle signal changes that reveal early, hidden cracking. This monitoring approach can not only prevent catastrophic failures but also help determine when maintenance and repair should occur, and thus reduce closures and traffic disruptions, ultimately improving public safety and saving money. As part of a larger research project, a concrete test slab representative of a concrete pavement was constructed in the PSU Structural Laboratory and equipped with a network of five ultrasonic transducers as well as temperature and humidity sensors. Active ultrasonic pulsing was used to monitor the slab over a period of several months. This undergraduate research project focused on a data set that was collected over a period of 15 days. Focusing on one transducer couple, data can be collected reliably over long periods of time and environmental factors (temperature and humidity) affect the recorded ultrasonic waveforms in the absence of damage. The effects on the waveform parameters are not straight forward and likely involve a time lag.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/45301

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